VIn Africa, the expression “medical deserts”, denoting the areas on French territory where consulting a general practitioner is challenging, may seem inappropriate or even come from another planet. Not just because There are 20 doctors for every 100,000 inhabitants on the continent (10 in Senegal, 80 in South Africa), versus 320 in France, but also because, what is an exaggerated paradox, the countries of the South actually subsidize the health systems of rich countries by emigrating a number of doctors trained there. Our “need” for foreign doctors is so great that the immigration bill – defended by the government, withdrawn and then put forward again – at least in its original version, provides for the creation of a specific residence permit to attract foreign healthcare professionals to France.

“We are helping to destabilize already poor healthcare systems”Condemns Rony Brauman, former MSF president, who in January signed an appeal for the withdrawal of the foreign doctor residency project. ” But, he adds It is important to remember why this skimming is so easy: in Africa, the health workforce is underpaid and unstable. If African countries invested more resources in their health systems, the phenomenon would be less significant. » In January, the International Council of Nurses recalled that a handful of wealthy countries — notably the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada — are responsible for 80% of nurse migration, and urged developed countries to become self-sufficient in the Education.

“wrong world”

This tendency of developed countries to shop in poor countries has only increased in the last twenty years. The number of foreign-trained doctors practicing in the – rich – countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) increased by 50% between 2006 and 2016, according to the organization. Again, France at 16% The proportion of foreign-born doctors is in a low range: more than one in two doctors is foreign in Australia and one in three in the UK, in line with the OECD average. The “brain drain” effect in the countries of the South is radical: 8% of doctors trained in India and 17% of doctors trained in Egypt work abroad. This is the case for more than a third of Cameroonian, Congolese and Senegalese practitioners.

As if this “upside down world” wasn’t enough, the paradoxical movement of doctors and nurses from south to north is coupled with another movement in the opposite direction, which is much less up for debate: that of countries’ doctors and nurses wealthy expatriates on a humanitarian basis in crisis areas. While the developed world recruits African doctors to fill the lack of political origins, it sends its own doctors to the latter’s countries of origin through UN agencies and NGOs.

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